Exalted Modern Armors
Once you have a plethora of ways to kill people, someone's going to want to come up with a way to stop you from doing so. In the olden days, when men tried to kill each other with swords, a simple 1cm plate of steel between your body and the other guy's sword was all that was needed; no sword could slice through it, and a swordsman who tried would simply dull his blade. Then people started using bullets, and 1cm steel plate became very, very expensive compared to the level of protection it didn't offer. Then along came A.I. DuPont Corporation, with a material called Kevlar, which was five times stronger than steel for it's size and weight. It wasn't long before someone came up with the idea of making a vest of the stuff; and suddenly armor was back in the race. Modern armors are in the main much, much lighter and easier to wear than the equavilent armors of the days of steel. However, most modern armor is meant to stop ballistic impacts, and will have a reduced or even nil effect against blunt force trauma and lethal stabbings. This has led to the rise of modular armor systems. Pretty much any single piece of armor alone is going to consitute light armor, even if that piece is a pair of rifle-resistant torso plates. The question, of course, is what happens when you start assembling full sets of armor? Any given vest system can be upgraded with additional protection. The first recourse is obviously a steel or ceramic backing of some sort to resist rifle rounds. This will also have the effect of giving the armor a Lethal protection value. The next step is to improve the coverage somewhat; groin protector, possibly a neck protector, shoulder or upper arm protectors, thigh protectors, side protectors. The third is the full enchilada, full coverage: lower legs, lower arms, and helmet. Of course, the greater the protection, the harder it is to be unknown as protected. Such is life. :All armors apply the best of their Lethal or Ballistic value to Environmental damage effects, such as shrapnel from grenades. Generic NIJ Level-System Armors This template shows the general format of the modern-day modular armors. The progression is generally assumed to be linear - IE, you don't normally wear full-coverage armor without the backing plates. However, the provision has been made to allow that in that the armor values are also provided as bonuses for self-calculation. The prices are cumulative, and you always use the highest armor category, Mobility and Fatigue penalties of any level of protection. Level 1 FLAK jackets - better than nothing, but do not trust your life to them! It won't reliably stop a whole hell of a lot, and generally not more than a .38 special. Even 9mm can penetrate. The only real benefit to wearing this kind of decades-old crap is that it's easily concealed beneath normal clothes and it's not harder to wear than an extra layer of clothes. This level of protection, while pathetic even at the highest end, is as easy as clothing to wear, and so counts as being Unarmored for the purposes of Charms which interact with one's level of armoring (such as Glorious Solar Plate or Supernatural Martial Arts.) Level II The Level II NIJ standard is rated as the minimum reccomended for any officer of the law. The II-A standard lacks the backing plate and is not reccomended; but being very concealable, it's good for undercover work. II-A is easily concealed underneath clothing, but adding the rifle-resistant plates makes concealability dicy at best; you'd need very baggy, thick clothing, or a very large and impressive jacket. Level III Now we're talking! Level III is the real deal, meant to stop some serious shit coming your way. Though the minimum reccomended for SWAT teams, it is strange to say that the U.S. Army's Interceptor body armor system does not have an NIJ-III-A rating, as the specifications for that armor did not call for protection from .44 magnum rounds. Concealing this level of armor is essentially impossible. Level IV Generally considered the hardest stuff human beings can personally wear in the modern day and age, Level-IV body armor is rated to withstand armour-piercing rifle rounds. To kill this stuff, you generally need to up the ante to antimaterial rifles. There is no such thing as Level IV-A. Hardened backing is implicit in Level IV armor. Getting ahold of this stuff is seldom cheap or easy, and it tends to be pretty damn bulky and heavy to wear. The upshot is that you get phenomenal amounts of protection against all reasonable and most unreasonable small arms, but the only way to conceal this stuff is to be camoflauged and hidden. You're not going to walk down a street in this stuff and escape notice short of magic - stunts need not apply. This is second cousin only to bomb disposal suits in terms of raw bulk. If you're planning to assault a place in this, you might as well strap an Mp3 player to your back hooked up to a pair of huge speakers on your person blasting out your favorite '80s action song (We humbly suggest The Final Countdown, Turn up the Radio and Welcome to the Danger Zone.) Non-Ballistic Armors Explosive ordnance disopsal technicians are some of the most insane people on the face of the planet Earth. Fortunately, those who employ them are generally not callous enough to send them out completely unprotected. While every EOD tech would certainly prefer to be using a robot (or at least a mine-protected vehicle's remote arms) to be doing this sort of work, it saddeningly often requires the human touch. This is where the Bomb Disposal Suit comes in. The size and rough thickness of Superheavy Plate, it's not meant so much to protect against bullets (though it's sheer mass will still offer significant protection from small arms,) as to withstand the point-blank explosion of an IED. Obviously, it can't protect against truely ridiculous explosions such as those from a bomb made from an old artillery shell, but it will generally save the disposal tech's life (if not all of his hands and limbs) from smaller IEDs, such as booby traps and improvised shrapnel bombs. Massively difficult and cumbersome to wear, it is usually donned immediately before proceeding to the sight of the explosive device, usually in a vehicle. It's not inconcievable, however, that one of the Heroes of the Dawn with indomitable personal Stamina could use a suit of this armor like the young Solars in the Second Age of Creation might resort to chain swathing or Superheavy Plate for lack of artifact armor. Specific Armor Systems Sometimes you don't want to pick and choose from amongst a bunch of generic schlock that might work. Sometimes you want something known and proven to work... Or perhaps you've simply been issued it and it's what you've got, not nessessarily what you want. Interceptor Body Armor While it was avanced and considered the best thing around when it first came out in the 1990s, the Interceptor body armor has come under incredible amounts of fire from all directions in recent years; there have been recalls about inability to stop even 9mm rounds, accusations that the armor is simply inadequate for a military theatre where the most common round encountered is the 7.62x39mm Soviet fired from an AK-47 (especially given the cheap availability of AP ammo,) and the weight. The Marine Corps found the Interceptor to be so bad that they replaced it with something commissioned specifically for them, and the Army has come under heavy fire for not replacing it with Dragon Skin. Still, unless you're a hyperactive lunatic capable of dodging bullets, it generally beats going unarmored. The OTV is the original Outer Tactical Vest, while the I-OTV is rather unimaginatively the same with the word Improved prepended to the name. The SAPI inserts are Small-Arms Protective Inserts, and E-SAPI are Enhanced SAPI. The armor also comes with groin and collar protection, but no leg and armor protection. It is assumed you're going to be wearing the groin and collar protectors if you're worried enough to add an additional 10 lbs to the sides with the SAPI and E-SAPI. Effectively, these count as the normal armor modularity paradigm... Of course, the tactical vest and it's enhancers are only the start of it; the full Interceptor typically has various pieces of webbing attached to it upon which the poor bastard issued the system can be burdened down with 60 lbs of schlock that he doesn't need in a firefight and probably won't need even marching through Baghdad. The upshot is that if you're working for the U.S. Army, you get a set of it for free. The downside is that they won't let you use anything else. Modular Tactical Vest Generally all-around better than the armor issued to the Army, the Marine Corps' armor still lacks any kind of extremity protection - but it is, at least, not as hated (or difficult to wear) as the Interceptor. It still uses the SAPI plates, but they're an integral part of the whole thing this time, with no annoyingly cumbersome side plates that are obviously aftermarket. Despite being called 'Modular,' the modularity of this armor system referrs to it's possession of PALS webbing (like all other military body armors), not to the ability to remove pieces to trade-off protection for mobility, and You had better be wearing the whole system, Marine! :For the suicidal Marine willing to risk his Gunnery Sergeant's wrath (not to mention lessened protection from hostile fire), the MTV's groin protection, collar protection and side slats can be removed. This reduces the protection to 4/6/4, makes it Light armor, and garuntees your ass a reaming by the Gunnery Sergeant when he catches you not wearing the whole damn armor. Dragon Skin Love it or hate it - there's no middle ground. Officially, the army hates Dragon Skin, and decry it as being insufficient. The manufacturer of DragonSkin says that it is in every way superior to every other offering on the market, and that the only reason it failed Army testing is because the Army tampered with it to save their cheaper Interceptor system. This would seem to be credible, given that long after the Army made a blanket ban on privately-owned armor and especially on DragonSkin called out by name, top generals and their bodyguards were seen in combat theaters wearing DragonSkin and not Interceptor. Numerous highly-publicized tests have shown DragonSkin to be visibly superior in every way, but those who conducted or certified the tests inevitably backed off. The situation is highly politicized and difficult to sort out - unless you can see 'under the hood' to the mechanics of DragonSkin, that is. (See above.) In form, DragonSkin is made of overlapping disks of silicon carbide ceramic matricies and laminates, like the larger ceramic plate inserts in older forms of body armor, suspended in the medium of bullet-resistant weave; in effect, it is modern-day scale or lamellar armor, and is very much a next-generation form of armor; far more flexible and easy to wear. It bypasses the "backed" level of armor, with the only question being how much coverage you want. Armor Accessories Armors may be accessorized with a great many things. Some of them have to do with protection, such as adding additional armor plates above and beyond the call of sanity - trading a lot of mobility and endurance for that extra iota of protection - while others are things like communications gear integrated into your armor, night vision goggles or infra-red sensing devices, lights, camoflauge - a great many potentialities reveal themselves. Shields Not seen so often these days, shields are generally the province of riot police. Typical employment is very much the same as the ancient Roman Phalanx; a squad of riot police form ranks with shields overlapping, facing off against an unruly crowd, and advance. Typically these are much lighter than shields from the middle ages would have been, but they will not stand up to small arms fire. They are often transparant, but not always. There are also, however, modern ballistic shields that will hold firm against even rifle fire. :Riot Shield, Small A small shield in the shape of a rectangle, usually three feet wide and three and a half feet tall, the small riot shield is the modern update of the target shield. It offers the advantages of bestowing upon the character a +1 DV bonus against hand to hand and +2 against ranged attacks (thanks to being able to see a missile coming and position the shield directly in one's line of sight without losing sight of the projectile), and has none the disadvantages. This type of shield is typically strapped to the forearm, allowing the wielder to use it and still fire a two-handed firearm, though swinging a two-handed melee weapon would be a bit much. The shield offers no bonus to attacks by firearms. A small riot shield costs approximately $650. An opaque shield is cheaper, at only $300, but has only a +1 bonus versus ranged attacks. :Riot Shield, Large Typically a large rectangle of LEXAN or similar material, the large riot shield is a modern update of the old style tower shield. Large enough to shield a tall man from shoulder to shoulder and from shins to helmet. They offer a DV bonus of +1 versus hand-to-hand attacks and +3 versus projectiles, including the splash from such things as molotov cocktails. Their typical use is to form a shield wall and hold the line against riots. This lightweight shield can be strapped to the forearm, allowing the wielder to use it and still fire a two-handed firearm, though swinging a two-handed melee weapon would be more or less impossible. A large riot shield costs approximately $850. An opaque shield is cheaper, $400, but only has a +1 bonus versus ranged attacks. It imposes only a -1 mobility penalty to the wearer, and no Fatigue penalty. :Ballistic Shield, Small Essentially the same as a small riot shield except made of an opaque material with a small viewing slit, the ballistic shield is much heavier and more cumbersome. They also only offer a +1 bonus against ranged attacks due to not being able to keep a transparant wall between you and what you're looking at. The upshot is that is will also protect against bullets; but being heavier, impose a -1 mobility penalty. A small ballistic shield typically costs $1,000. Versions exist with bright floodlamps on the front (no additional cost) and which fold up for easy storage inside a police cruiser's trunk ($1,350.) Some versions are fully transparant, made of extremely advanced polymers, but they fail to protect against armor-penetrating rounds. They cost $1,600. :Ballistic Shield, Large Like the smaller version, the large ballistic shield is meant to offer supreme protection in high-risk situations, and is most often issued to SWAT teams making methodical sweeps. It allows the person wielding it to protect himself and automatically extend that protection to everyone behind and adjacent to him when breaching a door or in similar situations (such as two abreast with large ballistic shields in a hallway with four guys behind them or a wall of people wielding these shields in a street.) They confer a DV bonus of +1 versus hand to hand attacks and +2 versus ranged attacks; bonuses which apply against gunfire. They do, however, impose a -1 mobility penalty on the person wielding it, and it's too heavy to strap to one's arm and use a two-handed firearm with. Such shields cost $1,600. Versions exist made fully of transparant, advanced polymers, which improve the bonus against ranged attacks to +3 and negate the mobility penalty (as well as restoring the ability to use a two-handed firearm,) for $2,200, but they do not protect against armor-penetrating rounds. Category:Exalted